They weren’t easy to spot at first: tiny green shoots with reddish roots, scarcely an inch high, poking out of the mud along the banks of a brackish stream near the Aegean town of Alaçatı. From these unpromising beginnings come a dish known to nearly every patron of a Turkish meyhane: nutrient-rich deniz börülcesi (samphire), typically served boiled and dressed with olive oil, lemon, and garlic. The simple word ot, which translates to “herb” or “weed,” doesn’t do justice to the important – and delicious – role these wild greens play in the cuisine of Turkey’s Aegean region. Though most commonly served as zeytinyağlılar, dishes “with olive oil” like the classic deniz börülcesi salad, their versatility was on full display at the recent Alaçatı Ot Festivali, an annual celebration of all things leafy and green.

It's the season of fresh garlic! Garlic at its best. This basic ingredient of Greek cuisine can be found fresh at the markets encountered on our Athens walks, and now is the best time to snag a stalk.

One of the great joys of spring in Japan is anticipating the appearance of sansai, or mountain vegetables. When cherry blossoms begin to flutter on warming breezes, hikers take to the hills to forage for the first wild edibles. Supermarkets mount special displays of packaged (and unfortunately often hot-house-raised) young sprouted leaves, shoots and tubers. Restaurants proudly offer up special seasonal dishes, providing an opportunity to bring the freshness of the outdoors to the table, even in the inner city. A bounty of deliciousness awaits those fortunate enough to get out of Tokyo and roam the hills. Fukinoto, taranome and warabi form a trifecta of green vegetables gleaned from mountain walks. Cooks wait all year to prepare dishes of these fragrant yasai veggies.

Wild greens or horta (χόρτα) are an ancient and still very important ingredient in traditional Greek cuisine (and happen to have exceptional nutritional value to boot). Every season brings different varieties: some more bitter, some milder and sweeter, some naturally salty, all with different textures and shades of green. Almost every single taverna around Greece includes horta in the salad section of the menu. These boiled greens served with virgin olive oil, sea salt and plenty of freshly squeezed lemon juice are one of the most common salads enjoyed throughout the year, usually with fish, but sometimes also with meat. When eating out, Greeks typically ask the waiter what type of horta the restaurant serves, as they know it depends on season, region and availability of each variety.

This steaming serving of ckmeruli (Georgian garlic chicken) is guaranteed to keep vampires away for a week. One may encounter a tasty (and protective) dish like this on our Tbilisi walk.

Anyone with observant eyes and a rumbling stomach will notice how newcomers to the city – and their snack foods – are cropping up like the pink beijo-turco flowers that grow in Rio’s forests after a heavy rain. There’s Hasan with his eggplant esfiha pastries amongst the popcorn vendors and candle-lighters at the Nossa Senhora da Glória church of Largo do Machado; energetic and trendy Armin with his falafel in Botafogo; tired Hafez with his boxes of savory snacks, trying to find shade on the Rua das Laranjeiras. Brazilians didn’t need to be told to like Arab food, and now they’re getting a fresh wave of that culture’s already iconic snacks. The bready esfihas and bulgur wheat kibe may be to Brazilians what chicken tikka masala is to Brits, a formerly foreign food now amongst the country’s most ubiquitous for drunk munchers and rushed lunch-breakers alike. Arab migration dates back over a century in Latin America, and Brazil’s Lebanese diaspora is the largest in the world, with a population as high as 10 million. Some 10 percent of Brazil’s congress is of Arab ancestry.

In the heart of Alfama’s historic flea market is a surprise: Lisbon has a small restaurant dedicated entirely to mushrooms. Located inside the charming old market building from where there is an excellent view over the Tagus river, Santa Clara dos Cogumelos (Saint Clara of Mushrooms) is a very peculiar eatery: from starter to finish, including desserts, are unexpected combinations of shiitake, oyster, porcini, black trumpets or truffles, all cooked using a variety of techniques.

Architectural and historical monuments of the Ottoman Era, the hans and caravansaray that freckle the old city, have mostly been left to their own devices. Originally built as imposing weigh stations for incoming traders, today they are crumbling in places and patched up with duct tape in others. These buildings are still living spaces of commerce and craftsmanship, or simply storage, a tradition which reaches back centuries. Wandering around one han which hosts a bustling trade in yarn, or visiting an Armenian silversmith in his tiny vaulted cell tapping detail into an elaborate dinner plate is a magical experience.

This row of coffee beans, roasted and then grinded, is enough to wake up an entire city. One might stumble upon such a scene on our Culinary Secrets of Downtown Athens tour.

We’d heard from a colleague that Renatos had the best barbacoa game in town, and we finally got the chance to confirm this claim for ourselves a couple of weeks ago. This family joint in Mexico City’s Azcapotzalco neighborhood has been in business for 55 years. Its owner, Renato Álvarez, gave us a little history lesson about his family and their barbacoa business. The barbacoa recipe prepared in Renatos is from the state of Hidalgo, famous for mutton slow-cooked in a pit dug into the ground.

It was a hot, humid June in Istanbul. A deadline hovered over Ahmed. He gave himself three months to make the biggest decision of his life: Would he stay? Or would he go? The reasons to leave Istanbul far outnumbered the ones to stay. He was working day and night for a salary that barely made ends meet. The long hours weren’t new – his life in Aleppo was work, 15 hours a day, seven days a week. But unlike in Turkey, Ahmed made more than enough in Syria: he bought a brand new house for his family just before the war; his wife, Laila, was a respected housewife, pushing her kids to study; his two older kids, Rubi and Ruseel – little Rivana wasn’t even born yet – went to good schools. Rubi even had a private English tutor.

We consider ourselves fabulously lucky every time we snatch up one of the ten counter stools or the three-seater table inside the triangular shaped and miniscule Savoy Pizza. Up a few steps as the street curves around behind itself, this smallest of small restaurants is easily missed; the space seems carved out of the corner of a building, almost like the bow of a ship. The best way to find it is to look for the clutch of hungry people hanging around outside, waiting for their slice of Neapolitan-style heaven. It is the kind of place that one is told about and then hesitates to tell more people lest the line outside never end.

The first and most vivid impression one has of Piraeus is its port: bustling, ugly and uninviting. Just a place you have to endure in order to get to your destination, usually a beautifully serene Greek island. Piraeus, however, is definitely an exciting place for anyone looking for a culinary adventure, as it is a melting pot of cultures with many interesting places hidden in the backstreets, away from tourists. The whole area next to Hadjikyriakeion for example, a girls’ orphanage built in the 19th century, is well known to locals for its humble, yet high-quality tavernas, serving fresh fish and simple meze all year round.

In Shanghai, wet markets hold the telltale signs that spring is finally upon us. Stalks of asparagus as thick as a thumb spring up first, alongside brown and white bamboo shoots so freshly pulled from the earth that dirt still clings to their fibrous shells. But the most exciting spring green is fava beans (蚕豆, cándòu), also known as broad beans. Their short season in Shanghai – usually just about four to five weeks – means they’re in high demand, and stalls are filled with workers shelling the labor-intensive beans by the bushel.

A Jun grills up more than just seafood at their Shouning Lu shop. These enoki mushrooms are powdered with four types of pepper before being thrown on the fire.